About Apocalypse Rising 2:
Apocalypse is honestly one of the weakest expansions in my opinion. The amount of content it added is quite minimalistic both compared to Utopia before it and several expansions added after it. At the time it was released, most of the value honestly went into the massive combat rework that came with the free update. The update had several controversial decisions (though ones that I earnestly believed were necessary to help let the game progress). The most controversial was the FTL rework. Prior to Apocalypse, there were three FTL methods you could choose at your empire creation. This was the Hyperdrive (the one that survived and everything uses now), Warp Drive (essentially the late-game Jump Drive but without penalties and increasing the risk of a crisis appearing) and the Wormhole Drive (Wormholes were left as natural phenomenon to be explored and the mechanic was reworked into a one-way megastructure called the Quantum Catapult in Overlord). The expansion did not age well. Most of the mechanics were decently neat at the time they were added but failed to keep up as time went on and newer expansions released cooler and more neater and more powerful ships. Titans are barely stronger than 3 Battleships combined, require a late-game tech, and their own dedicated starbase building to construct. You are capped by 1 Titan per every 200 Naval Capacity that you have to a maximum of 15. Honestly, it makes more sense just to build more Battleships as they are cheaper and construct faster and have no physical limits as to how many can be built. The auras they come with are okay but are not particularly powerful compared to more modern aura effects.